Everyone’s gone baking mad — it’s enough to drive Gizzi Erskine to smash her sieve. Instead, she rips up the cookbook and shows us how it’s done

The current home baking revolution has me in a quandary. I couldn’t be more
grateful to Bake Off for reminding us of the wonderful Mary Berry, and we
are all mucking in and doing more at home. Companies now have baking days
and baking competitions, which, if you ask me, are both genius ideas for
getting out of work for a few hours to eat cake. Whoever thought of them
deserves a knighthood.

The other side of me loathes it. I walk into any department store to be
greeted with gingham or cabbage rose prints adorning everything.
Wicker baskets and dreams of magazine-perfect lives that make me feel
distinctly less female — it just doesn’t compute with my image of the modern
woman. I will combust if one more person tells me they are thinking of
setting up a cupcake business because they enjoy making their (normally
pretty average) cupcakes. And